Intro/School Year Saturdays

INTRO

Okay, the awful inevitability that is blogging has finally defeated my normally lazy and half-interested brain. I'm the kind of person who will let a good idea fall by the wayside if there isn't a pen and paper in the general vicinity to document what I will eventually just think was a stupid idea to begin with. I, like Mitch Hedberg before me, just have to convince myself that the idea wasn't that funny. (RIP Mitch.) Anyway. I'd like to begin my autobi-blography by shamelessly admitting that I am typing this while sitting on the toilet. Nothin' like a good log-n'-blog, as they say. But really - a cyberspace high-five to anyone who has actually ever said that, just as soon as I wash my hands.

Poop jokes aside - which pretty much eliminates half of the things I meant to blog about - I do enjoy writing. I described starting a blog as an "awful inevitability" for this very reason. I've always found myself writing in some medium. I had a xanga in the past, albeit during the angsty teenage years that found me pining for girl after girl. In high school, I took a World Cultures class with my best friend Dan in which his uncle was our teacher. Dan's uncle thoroughly enjoyed giving extensive writing assignments that were to be completed with a partner of your choice - good news for the best friend of said uncle's son. Dan and I partnered up, the envy of others, churning out such wonders as "How the Three Musketeers Got Their Name" and and our personal favorite "Letter from the Trench" in which we turned Pip from Great Expectations into a Dickensian prisoner of war. Some things you can get away with when you're related to the teacher. Doesn't explain why I couldn't practice atheism in eighth grade CCD though. They were SO anti-fun. But I digress.

Point is, I like to write. I would consider each of Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris, Dave Eggers, and Michael Ian Black an inspiration to my writing, and I'd even be willing to give a little of my A+ credit to Chuck Dickens for the aforementioned "Letter from the Trench". Seriously, it's that good. I might just have to post it on here one day. Gold. Comic gold, I tell ya. Anyway, I have to admit that whenever I'm reading someone elses blog, it really bugs me when someone doesn't post for like three weeks. There is so much going on in the world that if you cannot find substance enough for one measley blog post in a three week period then...why are you keeping a blog in the first place? Be observational. Be introspective. Most of all, just be yourself. Everyone's got something to say, whether they open their mouth or not. Can that be my mantra? I think I'll make that my mantra. Yeah. Nice mantra.

SCHOOL YEAR SATURDAYS

This previous Monday, school began for most of the little kiddies around town. I've noticed, and I'm sure I'm the only one, that the weather seems to change almost as soon as school starts. The air gets considerably cooler, the sky turns a different shade of blue, and the sun shines just a tad less bright than before. It's not easy to describe, but you can just tell. Everything looks different. And it is distinctly more noticeable on school year Saturdays. As a 22 year-old who has experienced being home for school year Saturdays as both a student and now an adult-of-sorts, I can see and understand all of the previously unnoticed nuances of these special holidays. There are standard sights that you will see, mostly in the suburbs, on each and every school year Saturday and usually between the hours of 10:00 and 4:00. Here they are, in order of appearance:

1) Demon spawn.
- Singing birds may wake you up in the summer, but when the school year begins there is a decidedly more annoying foe - screaming children. You look out the window and there they are, doing God knows what in droves of God knows how many. Are kids ever actually doing anything? At most times it appears to be a game of "stand in a designated area and be loud for an inordinate amount of time". And they're REALLY fucking good at it. They have spent the previous five days locked in a personal private hell eating macaroni salad and anything that comes in loaf-form, pent-up childhood rage begging to explode out of every orifice at each and every moment. Only recess and lunch keep the demon spawn satisfied, but only temporarily, until they awake on Saturday with an immense hunger for your very aged soul. Before you curse their very existence and retire to the couch to watch the Little League World Series and laugh at 12 year-old tears, you have to understand where these little bastards are coming from. Saturday is their Mecca. It's all they have. Well, actually their youthful exuberance and disgustingly simple lives are all they have, but they're too young to know this. So we have to know it for them. And we know it for them with a simple under-the-breath muttering. "Fucking kids."

2) Father in the driveway.
- In the suburbs, there is a customary practice that occurs each and every school year Saturday morning. A father will inexplicably hang out in the driveway of his home for an extended period of time, usually removing and replacing items in his garage. But, again, he never really does anything. It's almost like the father has either stolen or taught his children the mantra of "stand in a designated area for an inordinate amount of time". The only difference being - the father is silent. After five days of coffee, cubicles, and caught-with-the-secretary, this is his Mecca. He can explain to his wife, who may or may not have already left him, that he has to "do some work in the garage" and then only return indoors for dinner and/or college football depending on his old lady's lenience with him partaking in televised sports. If we lived in a world of Pokemon, which we undoubtedly do, the demon spawn would evolve into the father in the driveway. It is one of the saddest aspects of a school year Saturday, to see the father in the driveway walk among the demon spawn, a perpetual zombie with little to no recollection of how to be LOUD while standing in a designated area for an inordinate amount of time. If you're reading this and your father is in the driveway right now, go give him a hug. He's got more problems than the math textbook those demon spawn are neglecting.

3) Cars.
- the number of cars in your neighborhood will increase ten-fold on school year Saturdays. Every car will be parked outside and no car will move during the hours of 10:00 and 4:00.

4) School-related sporting event.
- Every school year Saturday there is a school-related sporting event taking place at the nearest open field to your house. It may not even be a recognized sports field, but there will be an event taking place on its grounds nonetheless. If you live near the school, as I do, this is more immediately recognizable. Otherwise you may have to hop in your car and take a short drive to locate the school-related sporting event. But just know - it's taking place between the hours of 10:00 and 4:00 at a field near you.